IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint: Configuration & Sizing Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Version 10.1.4
June 2019
Jason Basler ([email protected])
Austen Cook ([email protected])
Jim Smith ([email protected])
Mark Wildey ([email protected])
e-mail all authors
This edition applies to Version 10.1.4 and later of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, and to all
subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in new editions or technical
newsletters.
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2019.
US Government Users Restricted Rights – Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP
Schedule Contract with IBM Corp.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 6
Objective................................................................................................................................................... 6
Support for the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint............................................................................ 6
What’s New .............................................................................................................................................. 7
Overview................................................................................................................................................... 8
Component Overview ............................................................................................................................ 11
Sample use case – deployment in two active locations ....................................................................... 11
Sample use case – deployment in central and branch offices .............................................................. 12
Sample use case – offload for long-term data storage ......................................................................... 13
Task overview ......................................................................................................................................... 14
Chapter 2. Choosing the Appropriate Technologies ................................................................................. 15
RAID ........................................................................................................................................................ 15
Compression ........................................................................................................................................... 15
Deduplication ......................................................................................................................................... 15
Encryption (at-rest) ................................................................................................................................ 16
Physical or virtual vSnap server deployment ........................................................................................ 17
Disk technology ...................................................................................................................................... 18
Sites and vSnap server distribution ....................................................................................................... 18
Replication considerations..................................................................................................................... 18
Throttling network usage during replication and offload operations .................................................. 20
VADP proxy considerations.................................................................................................................... 20
Microsoft Hyper-V considerations ......................................................................................................... 21
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool ...................................................................................................... 22
Introduction to the sizing tool ............................................................................................................... 22
Specifying global options ....................................................................................................................... 22
Specifying VMware (and general Application) workload options ........................................................ 23
Reviewing the results ............................................................................................................................. 24
Example sizing exercise .......................................................................................................................... 25
Sizing example for the Primary Site ................................................................................................... 27
Sizing example for the Secondary Site............................................................................................... 29
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Calculating the final sizing.................................................................................................................. 30
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration Blueprints.......................................................................... 31
Hardware recommendations for vSnap servers ................................................................................... 31
Hardware recommendations for combined vSnap server and VADP proxy .................................... 32
Hardware recommendations for dedicated VADP proxy ................................................................. 34
Blueprint for vSnap server ..................................................................................................................... 35
Hardware requirements for physical vSnap server with software defined RAID ............................ 35
Blueprints for multi-purpose storage and hypervisor .......................................................................... 36
Example hypervisor for running virtualized Spectrum Protect Plus server, vSnap server, and VADP
proxies ................................................................................................................................................ 36
Example storage system to provide storage for vSnap server with storage hardware defined RAID
............................................................................................................................................................ 37
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup ........................................................................................ 39
Configuring a virtual vSnap server using storage hardware defined RAID .......................................... 39
Configuring a physical vSnap server using storage software provided RAID....................................... 43
Adding a backup storage provider ......................................................................................................... 49
Chapter 6. Configuring VADP Proxies ........................................................................................................ 50
Installing VADP proxies .......................................................................................................................... 50
Setting the maximum number of VM’s to process concurrently ......................................................... 51
Distributing workload to multiple VADP proxies .................................................................................. 51
Chapter 7. Configuring Cloud Object Storage Offload .............................................................................. 52
Default cloud cache area........................................................................................................................ 53
Sizing the cloud cache ............................................................................................................................ 53
Recommended cloud cache disk technology ........................................................................................ 53
Expanding the cache area if it already exists ............................................................................................ 55
Chapter 8. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 56
Appendix A. vSnap Server Maintenance ................................................................................................... 57
Erasing a disk .......................................................................................................................................... 57
Setting the maximum number of replication streams .......................................................................... 57
Setting the maximum number of cloud offload streams ...................................................................... 57
Setting the maximum offload rate for cloud offloads .......................................................................... 58
Checking file system integrity on vSnap pools ...................................................................................... 58
Appendix B. Performance Information ..................................................................................................... 60
Appendix C. vSnap Server Performance Test Tool .................................................................................... 61
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Appendix D. Protecting vSnap System Configuration ............................................................................... 63
Backing up vSnap System Configuration ............................................................................................... 63
Restoring vSnap System Configuration ................................................................................................. 64
Notices ........................................................................................................................................................ 65
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 1. Introduction
Objective
This document provides guidance on how to build an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus™ solution. This
document primarily focuses on how to properly size, build, and place storage components and
data movement components for data protection in a VMware vSphere virtual machine
environment. The guidance can be generalized for any application protection available with
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.
This guide does not provide instructions or sizing guidance for offloading data to the IBM
Spectrum Protect server. For information about this feature, see the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
Installation and User’s Guide “Offloading to IBM Spectrum Protect by Using IBM Spectrum
Protect Plus. “
Support for the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
The information in this document is distributed on an “as is” basis without any warranty that is
either expressed or implied. Support assistance for the use of this material is limited to
situations where IBM Spectrum Protect Plus support is entitled and where the issues are not
specific to a blueprint implementation.
This document is intended to be used with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Version 10.1.3 and is not
applicable to prior releases of the product.
Note: Throughout this document these abbreviations are used: MB to indicate 1024 2 bytes, GB
to indicate 10243 bytes, and TB to indicate 10244 bytes. The sizing tool that is provided in
conjunction with this document uses the abbreviations MiB to indicate 1024 2 bytes, GiB to
indicate 10243 bytes, and TiB to indicate 10244 bytes. Even though the abbreviations are used
inconsistently between this document and in the sizing tool the units are the same; values can
be transposed without regard to this inconsistency.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 1. Introduction
What’s New
The following changes have been made to the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprints and
accompanying sizing spreadsheet in Version 10.1.4 of these documents:
•
•
•
•
Copy snapshots to tape or cloud archive storage for long-term data protection
Check file system integrity on vSnap pools
Backup and restore vSnap system configuration
Added basic information about using this document for Microsoft Hyper-V
environments
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 1. Introduction
Overview
The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus solution is provided as a self-contained virtual appliance. While
using the appliance as a self-contained solution will be suitable for certain workloads, this
blueprint is based on deploying dedicated storage and data movement (proxy) components.
Before getting into the details of how to size and build these components, it is necessary to
understand the fundamental concepts and building blocks in an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
solution.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server – This is the component of the infrastructure that
manages and orchestrates the entire system. The server consists of several catalogs that
track various system aspects such as recovery points, configuration, access,
customizations, etc. There is always only one IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server in a
deployment, even if the deployment is spread across multiple locations.
Note: Sizing the catalogs is outside of the scope of this blueprint. The default sizes
provisioned for the catalogs should be sufficient for most workloads but can be
expanded if necessary. In general, place the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus appliance on
high performing, flash storage to optimize catalog performance.
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Site – A site is an IBM Spectrum Protect policy construct which is used to manage data
placement in the environment. A site can be physical (a data center location) or logical
(a department or organization). IBM Spectrum Protect Plus components are assigned to
sites to localize and optimize data paths. A deployment always has at least one site per
physical location. Determining the appropriate number of sites for a deployment will be
covered later in this document. The general philosophy is to localize data movement to
the sites by placing vSnap servers and VADP proxies together in the sites. The placement
of backup data to a site will be governed by the SLA policies.
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vSnap server – Also referred to in the interface as a backup storage provider. This is a
pool of disk storage that receives data from production systems for the purposes of data
protection or re-use. The vSnap server consists of one or more disks and can be scaled
up (adding disks to increase capacity) or scaled out (introducing multiple vSnap servers
to increase overall performance). There is always at least one vSnap server based on
sizing needs. Determining the appropriate number of vSnap servers for a deployment is
one of the basic questions addressed by this document.
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vSnap pool – Also referred to in this document as a storage pool. This is the logical
organization of disks into a pool of storage which is consumed by the vSnap server
component. This concept is not critical to understand in the scope of architecting a
backup solution but will be used later in this document when the vSnap server
configuration is discussed in more technical detail.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 1. Introduction
•
VADP proxy – This is the component that is responsible for moving data from the
vSphere datastores to provide protection for VMware virtual machines (VADP is the
acronym for “VMware vSphere Storage APIs - Data Protection”). There is always at least
one VADP proxy component for each site based on sizing needs which will be discussed
later in this document.
•
Note: You can install the vSnap server (backup storage provider) and VADP proxy on the
same physical or virtual system. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus will optimize data
movement by eliminating an NFS mount when these two systems are co-located
•
Backup – This term is used throughout this document to signify the movement of data
from a production/host system into the vSnap server for the purposes of data
protection.
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Replication – This term is used throughout this document to indicate the copying data
from a vSnap server to another vSnap server at another site to create redundancy for
disaster recovery.
•
Offload – This term is used to indicate the copying data from a vSnap server to an IBM
Spectrum Protect server instance or to cloud object storage to create additional (or
unique) copies for offsite and/or long-term retention purposes. You can specify different
and longer retentions in SLA policies for offloaded data to lower overall costs relative to
keeping data in the vSnap server repositories.
Note: offload creates a copy of data from the vSnap server into object storage. This is
not to be confused with a move or tiering operation.
•
Archive – This term is used to indicate the copying of data from a vSnap server to an
IBM Spectrum Protect server that stores the data on physical tape media or in a virtual
tape library. Additionally, it can be used to copy snapshots to one of the following
archive storage services: Amazon Glacier, IBM Cloud™ Object Storage Archive Tier, or
Microsoft Azure Archive.
Note: archive creates a copy of data from the vSnap server into object storage. This is
not to be confused with a move or tiering operation. The differences between archive
and offload are:
o archive always sends a full copy of the data; offload only sends incremental
changes since the last offload operation
o Recovering data from an archive requires that the data be staged into an
intermediate disk tier prior to accessing the data which affects time to first byte
and ultimately recovery time objectives; offload data can be recovered directly
from the offload repository.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 1. Introduction
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 1. Introduction
Component Overview
The following figures outline sample deployments of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus to
demonstrate how the various components are deployed.
Sample use case – deployment in two active locations
Figure 1 - IBM Spectrum Protect Plus deployed in two active locations
Figure 1 illustrates IBM Spectrum Protect Plus deployed in two active locations. Each location
has inventory that needs to be protected. For example, Location 1 has a vCenter server and two
vSphere datacenters (and an inventory of virtual machines) and Location 2 has a single
datacenter (and a smaller inventory of virtual machines in the datacenter).
The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server is only deployed in one of the sites. VADP proxies and
vSnap servers (with their corresponding disks) are deployed in each site to localize data
movement in the context of the protected vSphere resources. Note in this example the VADP
proxies and vSnap servers have been located on the same systems in both locations and an
additional VADP proxy has been installed at Location 2. An SLA site designation is given to each
site, “Primary Site” and “Secondary Site” so that the backup workloads can be placed in the
appropriate locations.
Bi-directional replication is configured to take place between the two sites.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 1. Introduction
Sample use case – deployment in central and branch offices
Figure 2 - IBM Spectrum Protect Plus deployed in a central location and two branch locations
Figure 2 illustrates IBM Spectrum Protect Plus deployed in a central location and two supported
branch locations. Each location has inventory that needs to be protected. For example, Central
Office has a vCenter server and two vSphere datacenters (and an inventory of virtual machines)
and the branch locations each have a single datacenter (and a smaller inventory of virtual
machines).
The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server is only deployed in the Central Office. VADP proxies and
vSnap servers (with their corresponding disks) are deployed in each site to localize data
movement in the context of the protected vSphere resources. An SLA site designation is given
to each site, Central Site, Branch 1 Site, and Branch 2 Site, so that the backup workloads can be
placed in the appropriate locations.
Replication is configured so that each of the branch sites is replicating data to the Central Site.
Note: The backups targeted for the Central Site should also be protected by replication, but this
has been omitted to simplify the illustration.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 1. Introduction
Sample use case – offload for long-term data storage
Figure 3 - data offload to cloud object storage or IBM Spectrum Protect
Figure 3 illustrates the new data offload capability that is ideal for long-term data storage and
data compliance and provides an attractive storage option for disaster recovery and cyber
resiliency.
In this figure replication is used to protect the data stored in the Primary Site. Offload can copy
data from the Primary Site or the Secondary site to cloud object storage targets (IBM Cloud
Object Storage, Amazon S3, and Microsoft Azure Blob storage) or to a Spectrum Protect server.
For more information about offload use cases refer to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Offload
Solutions.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 1. Introduction
Task overview
The document will help you create a suitable IBM Spectrum Protect Plus deployment for your
environment by guiding you through the following tasks:
1. Refer to the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Installation and User’s Guide chapter
“Installation and Setup“ for guidance on how to install the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
server. The details of the server installation are not covered in this document as they are
well documented in the User’s Guide. The rest of the steps listed assume that you have
deployed the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server.
2. Now that you understand the basic components and infrastructure of an IBM Spectrum
Protect Plus solution, you will need to make decisions about the technology which will
directly affect how the solution with be deployed. These choices will include discussion
on RAID, data compression and deduplication, and other technology choices. Chapter 2
walks you through the various decision points and advises you on making appropriate
choices.
3. The next task is to answer the question “How many components do I need to deploy?”
Chapter 3 will show you how to use the sizing tool that is provided in conjunction with
this document to appropriately size your environment. This includes sizing not only
initial ingest (backup) data but also replication and offloaded copies of data.
4. Now that you know how many components you need to deploy, Chapter 4 provides
templates of systems that you can use to build the solution. These templates are the
“blueprints” of the building block you will use to architect your system.
5. Once the appropriate number of hardware components are deployed, you will need to
configure the vSnap server components so that they can be used. Chapter 5 walks you
through a few different vSnap server configuration scenarios based on the technology
choices that were made in Chapter 2.
6. You will need to configure one or more VADP proxies to protect a VMware vSphere
environment. Chapter 6 walks you through this final configuration task so that you can
begin managing and monitoring IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.
7. Finally, if you are planning on creating backup copies for long-term retention in cloud
object storage or IBM Spectrum Protect, Chapter 7 describes how you appropriately size
the cloud cache on the vSnap server which is necessary to enable data protection
operations to these endpoints.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 2. Choosing the Appropriate Technologies
Chapter 2. Choosing the Appropriate Technologies
Before you start sizing your environment, you will have to understand different technology
choices available to you as these decisions will directly affect how your environment is sized
and architected. This chapter will help give you guidance on choosing the appropriate
technologies to suit your desired outcomes.
RAID
Recommendation: Use RAID 6 technology to protect the vSnap server from disk failures.
Ultimately the decision to use software RAID or storage hardware RAID is up to the user. These
are the two options presented in this blueprint:
•
•
If you have pre-existing investment in storage that provides storage hardware RAID such
as the IBM® Storwize® v5020, you should consider using RAID 6 provided by the storage
hardware combined with vSnap RAID 0.
If storage hardware RAID is not available in the storage system (for example, a JBOD
configuration), you should use the vSnap server provisioned RAID 6. Another advantage
of this configuration is that the vSnap server provisioned software RAID can detect and
correct data corruption.
Compression
Recommendation: Use vSnap compression
The vSnap server provides a suitable compression algorithm for most workloads. If you have
already made the decision to enable compression in the hardware, do not enable compression
on the vSnap server.
Note: Throughout this document, all examples are given with vSnap compression enabled.
Deduplication
Recommendation: This is a user decision balancing potential storage savings against the costs
of sizing a system that is optimized for data deduplication.
Deduplication needs to be considered as part of a total data reduction strategy. Not only should
you consider whether to use deduplication technologies, but you must also determine the best
place in the stack to perform deduplication. Ultimately the decision comes down to weighing
the potential storage space savings against the costs of sizing a system that is optimized for
data deduplication.
Data deduplication identifies blocks of storage which are identical (redundant) and intelligently
manages the backup system by storing only one copy of the redundant block. Data
deduplication is most effective if there are large amounts of redundant data in an ecosystem.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 2. Choosing the Appropriate Technologies
From an overall data reduction standpoint, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus uses a full-once,
incremental forever backup technology which minimizes the amount of redundant data that
the system must process. Contrast this to a backup system which periodically requires a full
backup of data that mostly has not changed. In such a backup system, there is naturally more
potential for data deduplication as there is more redundant data.
Note: In Spectrum Protect Plus, the scope of data deduplication is within a single vSnap server
repository.
While it is hard to predict the amount of potential data redundancy that can be eliminated by
data deduplication, consider these general guidelines:
•
•
Virtual machine and virtual desktop environments can have a high rate of data
redundancy, especially if the virtual machines are using similar deployments (similar
operating system and patch levels). In addition, many virtual machines or virtual
desktops deployed in an environment will usually translate into a higher amount of
redundant data
Unstructured data usually contains more redundant data then structured data. File
servers (unstructured) typically show better deduplication results then Oracle or
Microsoft SQL servers (structured).
“Pros” of data deduplication
•
If there is enough data redundancy in a system, data deduplication can reduce the
storage costs more efficiently than other technologies such as compression.
“Cons” of data deduplication
•
•
Performance is slower as compared to systems using compression only.
The cost of a system optimized for data deduplication in terms of server resources will
be higher. See section Hardware recommendations for vSnap servers for more
information about required system resources.
Encryption (at-rest)
Recommendation: This is a user decision. The most important factor is that you size the vSnap
server resources (memory, CPU, etc.) appropriately and set-up sites to appropriately manage
encryption in the context of SLA policies.
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus offers the option to encrypt data using AES 256-bit encryption in the
vSnap server at-rest. Data ingested during a backup or replication operation to a vSnap server
can be encrypted after the data is compressed and/or deduplicated. The data remains
encrypted in the vSnap server until it is read for a restore, re-use, or replication operation at
which time it will be decrypted.
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Chapter 2. Choosing the Appropriate Technologies
Note: When replicating data, the replication process protects the data in-flight but you will
need to ensure that the target vSnap server is also encrypted if you intend to store the
replicated data in an encrypted format. When using offload the data will be protected in-flight
but you will need to configure the object storage system to provide at-rest encryption if you
indent to protect the offloaded data at-rest.
Encryption is predominantly a function of CPU. The sizing information presented in this
document and the accompanying sizing tool assume that encryption will be used. Encryption
will consume up to 5-10% extra CPU resource depending on the environment.
Encryption is enabled on each vSnap server. If you chose to use encryption globally, ensure that
you enable encryption on all vSnap servers in the environment. If you plan to only encrypt some
of the data, it is recommended that you group vSnap servers into sites so that you can manage
encryption through SLAs. Refer to the section Sites and vSnap server distribution for more
information on this topic.
Physical or virtual vSnap server deployment
Recommendation: This is a user decision. The most important factor is that you size the vSnap
server resources (memory, CPU, etc.) appropriately.
Physical vSnap servers can be preferable because the backup infrastructure is not tied to the
virtualization platform, there are no additional virtual licensing costs incurred, and no
dependency on the availability of vCenter.
Virtual vSnap servers have the advantage of having a single management interface for both the
vSnap servers and virtual infrastructure you are protecting. It is also easy to deploy additional
components through deployment of virtual appliances, and you can take advantage of highavailability facilities in the virtual infrastructure. If you use a virtual vSnap server, consider
dedicating an ESXi host to manage the vSnap server or servers.
If you choose to use a virtual vSnap server, you can use pRDM storage or you can present the
storage as an NFS datastore (for example if you have a NAS device or an IBM Elastic Storage
Server). If you are using an NFS datastore, the storage must be supported by both VMware and
by the vendor for use as an NFS datastore.
If you use virtual disks, it is important to avoid situations which can cause out-of-space
conditions in the datastore by taking these steps:
1. Allocate all of the space for the storage at time of creation by using thick disk
provisioning. Do not use thin disk provisioning.
2. Do not take vSphere snapshots of the virtual vSnap server. As a safeguard, consider
making the virtual machine disk mode as Independent - Persistent so snapshots cannot
be performed against the disks.
Note: The information presented in this document is based on the use of pRDM storage.
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Chapter 2. Choosing the Appropriate Technologies
Disk technology
Recommendation: In this document we have selected disk technology ideally suited for backup
and restore streaming at a low-cost point. For some data re-use scenarios, higher performing
disk systems such as flash might be preferable. This can be accomplished by having an SLA
policy configured to place data in the higher performing disk system.
Sites and vSnap server distribution
Recommendation:
•
•
•
Always have at least one site per physical location
Always have at least one vSnap server per site
Use the sizing tool that is provided in conjunction with this document to determine the
appropriate number of vSnap servers for each site
As noted in the introduction, the general philosophy is to localize data movement to the sites
by placing vSnap servers and VADP proxies together in the sites. The placement of backup data
to a site will be governed by the SLA policies. In general, you will define a site for each physical
location but there might be cases where you want to define multiple sites in a physical location
if you want to achieve the outcomes listed below:
• Maintain data separation (tenancy) between groups such as organizations or
departments
• Maintain data separation between primary backup data and data replicated from
another vSnap server. For example, if you have two locations and each location uses the
other location as a replication target. You may choose to separate the data at each
location so that the primary backup data at the location is separated from the
replication data at the location.
• Provide different SLAs based on class-of-disk. For example, an SLA for faster backup and
recovery based on flash storage and an SLA for standard backup and recovery based on
standard spinning disk technology.
• Provide different SLAs based on encrypting data at-rest in the vSnap server repositories.
For example, an SLA for encrypted backup storage and an SLA which does not encrypt
backup storage.
In each of the cases above it is necessary to have at least two sites to create and manage the
appropriate SLA policies.
Replication considerations
Replication between the vSnap servers is bi-directional. In other words, a vSnap server that is
used to backup data can serve both as a replication source and a replication target. More
specifically, in each location, each site acts as a backup target (receiving data from protected
applications and having its dedicated VADP proxies), a replication source, and a replication
target, receiving replication data from the partner site. Consider the following illustration in
which each location has a single site which acts as both a replication source and target.
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Chapter 2. Choosing the Appropriate Technologies
Figure 4 - IBM Spectrum Protect Plus deployed with bi-directional replication between sites
Another option is to dedicate a vSnap server to a single replication function, either a replication
source or a replication target with the goal being to more easily manage the separation of data
between the vSnap servers. To do this, you must have two sites defined at each location: one
site is defined as the backup site (and, therefore, the replication source), and the other site is
defined as the replication target. Each site will have a partner site at the second location as
illustrated in the following figure.
In Location 1 there are two sites: The Primary Backup Site and the Primary Rep-Tgt Site.
Location 2 has a similar configuration.
The Primary Backup Site receives backup data for Location 1 (and therefore has other
components such as VADP proxies deployed) and replicates the data to the Secondary Rep-Tgt
Site at Location 2 which acts as a replication target. Because the site only receives replication
data, there are no other components such as VADP proxies assigned to the site.
Note: Data that is replicated between two vSnap servers is protected by SSH encryption.
Note: The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server and protected applications have been omitted
from this illustration for simplicity.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 2. Choosing the Appropriate Technologies
Figure 5 - IBM Spectrum Protect Plus deployed with dedicated replication sites.
There are no recommendations for how to configure sites for replication. Some users will be
more comfortable with the simplicity of the first model (each site acting as a replication source
and target) while other users will want to have the replication data cleanly separated from the
backup data and choose the second model. In either case it will be important to properly size
the site for the replication workloads.
Throttling network usage during replication and offload operations
You can limit the bandwidth usage by using site throttling between vSnap repositories. By
throttling workloads, you can help to avoid impact to any critical operations that use the same
networks. For more information about defining throttling rates, refer to the IBM Knowledge
Center topic Changing offload throughput rate.
For additional tuning of replication and offload operations see Appendix A. vSnap Server
Maintenance.
VADP proxy considerations
These are some general considerations when planning for VADP proxy deployment.
1. As noted in the introduction, the general philosophy is to localize data movement to the
sites by placing VADP proxies in each site that you are trying to protect. Each site should
have at least one VADP proxy.
2. Physical vs. virtual proxy? The first question that most users have is whether to deploy a
physical or virtual proxy. If the proxy has appropriate resources (memory, CPU, network)
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Chapter 2. Choosing the Appropriate Technologies
there is generally no difference in physical vs. virtual VADP proxies. Usually, it will be
easier to deploy a virtual proxy since there is already an existing vSphere deployment.
Refer to the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus – All Requirements Doc for more information
about VADP system requirements.
3. As noted previously, you can optimize VADP proxy placement by collocating the VADP
proxy on the same machine as the vSnap server(s). This is supported on Linux
distributions which support both the vSnap server and the VADP proxy. If you choose to
collocate these two components make sure the system is sized appropriately for both
workloads, taking the sum of the CPU, memory, and storage requirements of the two
components.
4. If you only have a 1 Gbps network consider having two adapters on the VADP proxy.
One adapter should be dedicated to reading data from the vSphere datastores
(transport) and the other should be dedicated to sending the data to the vSnap server.
5. The choice of transport (the data path between the VADP proxy and the vSphere
datastore) is based on the VADP proxy type.
a. For virtual VADP proxies, the transport can be HotAdd or NBDSSL
b. For physical VADP proxies, the transport can be SAN or NBDSSL
Microsoft Hyper-V considerations
While this document is written with a primary focus on IBM Spectrum Protect Plus deployed in
a VMware vSphere environment, the information in this document is also applicable to IBM
Spectrum Protect Plus deployed in a Microsoft Hyper-V environment.
1. The main difference between in these environments is that there is no VADP Proxy
component in Microsoft Hyper-V environments. This will be reflected in the sizing tool
when you size Microsoft Hyper-V workloads.
2. Test results from our lab have shown that performance is much better for a physical
vSnap server deployment then a virtual vSnap server deployed as a Microsoft Hyper-V
virtual machine.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool
Introduction to the sizing tool
The “Spectrum Protect VSNAP Sizer” is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which is designed to
provide an estimated number and size of vSnap server and VADP Proxies that you will need to
deploy to optimally use IBM Spectrum Protect Plus to protect your environment. This chapter
demonstrates how to use the sizing tool.
Note: You will have to use this tool to size each site in your environment by creating a separate
spreadsheet instance for each site.
The general workflow with the sizing tool will be covered in detail in this chapter. Below is a
summary of the tasks to be accomplished:
1. For each site you need to create, you will go through the exercise in the spreadsheet
2. Start by specifying global options for the site which include compression, deduplication,
and other estimated global values
3. Fill in the amount of protected data and policy information for each application (the
example below will be for VMware vSphere data).
4. Review the results which will indicate how many vSnap servers and VADP proxies you
will need to deploy at each site.
Note: The workbook contains macros. You must click Enable Macros to use this tool.
Note: Throughout this document these abbreviations are used: MB to indicate 1024 2 bytes, GB
to indicate 10243 bytes, and TB to indicate 10244 bytes. The sizing tool that is provided in
conjunction with this document uses the abbreviations MiB to indicate 1024 2 bytes, GiB to
indicate 10243 bytes, and TiB to indicate 10244 bytes. Even though the abbreviations are used
inconsistently between this document and in the sizing tool the units are the same; values can
be transposed without regard to this inconsistency.
Specifying global options
Start with the “Start Here” sheet to set global options:
•
•
•
“VSNAP Enable Compression” - Enable compression based on the choice you made in
the previous chapter.
“Compression Estimate” - Leave this value at “2:1” unless you have site specific
information about your compression ratios.
“VSNAP Enable Dedupe” - Enable data deduplication based on the choice you made in
the previous chapter.
22
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
•
•
•
•
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool
“Deduplication Estimate” – Leave this value at the default unless you have site specific
information about your deduplication ratios
“VSNAP Reserve %” – This is the amount of reserve space you will plan for your vSnap
servers to avoid space constraints. Leave this value at the default unless you are using
virtual disks in a vSphere datastore for the vSnap server storage as noted in the section
Physical or virtual vSnap server deployment.
Note: Space needs to be reserved in the vSnap repositories to allow for data re-use
scenarios and snapshot management. Backups will start failing when the amount of
space in the vSnap repository falls below 20%. For this reason, the default reserve % is
set to 25% so that you can avoid backup failures. For smaller vSnap repositories (1 – 20
TB) you might consider raising this value to 30%. The user will be alerted when available
free space in a vSnap repository falls below 30% via the new alerting feature in IBM
Spectrum Protect Plus.
“VMware Host to VADP Proxy Network (Gbps)” – Choose the network bandwidth of the
network that connects the VMware ESXi hosts to the VADP proxy, either 10 Gbps or 1
Gbps.
“VSNAP Network (Gbps)” – Choose the network bandwidth of the network that
connects the VADP proxy to the vSnap servers, either 10 Gbps or 1 Gbps.
Specifying VMware (and general Application) workload options
Select the “VMware” sheet to provide information about your protected virtual machines.
“Daily change rate” – This is the expected daily change rate of the virtual machine storage. Daily
change rates can vary based on workloads. Use the default value unless you have site-specific
information about your change rates. Some general guidelines are:
•
•
Larger databases (structured databases) will tend to have lower change rates such as
2.5%.
Smaller file and web servers will tend to have larger change rates such as 10%.
“Annual growth” – This is the annual expected growth of virtual machine storage. Use the
default value unless you have site-specific information about your expected annual storage
growth.
For each SLA policy that you intend to use, fill in the estimated front-end capacity of the virtual
machines that you will protect with the policy. Fill-in the backup frequency, expected backup
duration (backup window), retention, and whether you intend to replicate the data to another
vSnap server.
Note: The maximum retention value supported by the tool is currently 365 days.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool
Reviewing the results
Select the “Sizing Results” sheet to view the results of the sizing. Note the results for both the
Primary Copy and the Replication Copy. The results will indicate how many vSnap servers and
VADP Proxies you will need at each site.
Please pay attention to the following points when reviewing results:
1. Validate that the network between the VADP proxies and vSnap server can meet the
“Peak VSNAP Front End Rate”. If the network is not capable of meeting this rate you will
need to either increase the backup window, upgrade the network, or use more vSnap
servers.
2. The “vSnap Quantity” is based on the “VSNAP Physical Capacity Estimate (TiB)” divided
by the value of “Preferred vSnap Size (TiB)” on the Start Here sheet.
3. “VADP Quantity” is based on a generic sizing of a single VADP proxy managing 100 TB of
front-end virtual machine data
4. The “VSNAP Quantity” for the replication copy is shown separately. The replication
capacity needs to be added to a different spreadsheet for the site that will receive the
replication. An example is provided below to illustrate this point
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool
Example sizing exercise
The following example sizing exercise illustrates how to use the tool. Consider the example in
the figure below.
Figure 6 – Example environment
In this example a company has two datacenters in two locations. Location 1 contains a vSphere
vCenter and datacenter with 100 TB of deployed capacity and a Microsoft SQL deployment of
50 TB. Location 2 has an Oracle database deployment of 200 TB.
The business has provided the following data protection requirements and statistics
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
All virtual machine and database data has to be protected once a day with a 30-day
retention
Virtual machines require an additional backup copy with a 180-day retention. It is
preferable to use lower cost storage for these additional backup copies.
All data must be replicated to the non-hosting site (for example, virtual machine data at
Location 1 needs to be replicated to Location 2). All replicated data needs to be retained
with the same retention as the source data.
Storage optimization is preferable.
Daily change rate for VMware vSphere data has been observed to be higher than normal
at about 7% with an annual growth rate of 20%.
Daily change rate for the Oracle databases has been observed to be lower than normal
at about 2.5%.
The data protection ecosystem needs to be sized for three years of protection.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool
Before using the sizing tool, note some of the following aspects of the system.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Two sites will be created in the Spectrum Protect Plus server so that the data can be
placed appropriately (VMware vSphere data and Microsoft SQL data placed in the
Primary Site in Location 1 and Oracle database data placed in the Secondary Site at
Location 2).
The default Silver SLA can be used in both sites to meet the requirement for daily
backup with 30-day retention
The new data offload to cloud object storage feature will be used to create weekly
backup copies with 180-day retention. The data offloads can be generated from the
replicated data in the Secondary Site.
Since storage optimization is preferable, deduplication and compression will be used.
Since there is no stated requirement for segregation of backup and replication data,
replication can be set-up as bi-directional between the sites, in other word each site will
act as a replication source and replication target.
Since there is no native VMware vSphere data to back up at Location 2, there will not be
a need to deploy VADP proxies at the Secondary Site. (Note: even though VMware data
will be offloaded from the replicated copy at the Secondary Site, the offload operation
does not require a VADP proxy).
To size this environment, you will have to use the tool to calculate the sizing of the components
at both the Primary Site and the Secondary Site, considering that each site acts as a replication
target and must consider the replication data that will be received.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool
Sizing example for the Primary Site
We will start with the Primary Site which contains the VMware vSphere and Microsoft SQL data.
1. Save a copy of the sizing spreadsheet named for the Primary Site so that you do not
accidently overwrite your worksheet.
2. Select Enable Content to enable macros in the spreadsheet.
3. Select the Start Here worksheet.
a. Select Click to reset the data in the spreadsheet.
b. Set the VSNAP Enable Dedup cell to “Yes”.
4. Select the VMware worksheet.
a. Enter “7%” for Daily Change rate.
b. Enter “20%” for Annual growth.
c. In the Silver Policy column, enter and/or verify the following values in the
Backup Frequency box
i. “100” for Front End (TiB)
ii. “1” “Day(s)” for Backup Frequency
iii. “8” for Backup Duration Hr(s)
iv. “30” for Retention Day(s)
d. In the Silver Policy column, enter and/or verify the following values in the
Replication Policy box
i. “Yes” for Replication Policy?
ii. “12” for Daily Replication Duration Hr(s)
iii. “30” for Replication Retention Day(s)
e. In the Silver Policy column, enter and/or verify the following values in the
Offload Policy box
i. “Yes – Repl vSnap” for Offload Policy?
ii. “1” “Week(s)” for Offload Frequency
iii. “8” for Offload Duration Hr(s)
iv. “180” for Offload Retention Day(s)
5. Select the Application-1 worksheet to fill-in the information for Microsoft SQL
a. In the Silver Policy column, enter and/or verify the following values in the
Backup Frequency box
i. “50” for Front End (TiB)
ii. “1” “Day(s)” for Backup Frequency
iii. “8” for Backup Duration Hr(s)
iv. “30” for Retention Day(s)
v. “Yes” for Backup Logs?
b. In the Silver Policy column, enter and/or verify the following values in the
Replication Policy box
i. “Yes” for Replication Policy?
ii. “12” for Daily Replication Duration Hr(s)
iii. “30” for Replication Retention Day(s)
c. In the Silver Policy column, enter and/or verify the following values in the
Offload Policy box
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool
i. “No” for Offload Policy?
6. Select the Sizing Results worksheet.
a. For Preferred VSNAP Size (TiB) select “Automatic”
We will now check the sizing results for the Primary Site as calculated on the Sizing Results
worksheet. Since we are sizing for a three-year period, we will be looking at the column labeled
Projected 2 Year.
1. Note the following sizing results for the Primary Copy as you will need them for the final
sizing
a. VSNAP Quantity is calculated to 1 vSnap servers with a capacity of 182.7 TiB.
b. The VADP Proxy resides on vSnap Server? Is set to “Yes” by default in the Sizing
Results worksheet. The VADP Quantity is the included in the 1 vSnap servers.
c. Note the recommended VADP Softcap setting. This value needs to be set on
each VADP proxy. See Configuring VADP Proxies for more information on setting
the VADP Softcap setting.
d. The Peak VSNAP Front End Rate is listed at 4 Gbps. Considering that the vSnap
server has a 10 Gbps network, the network should be sufficient for the estimated
rates.
2. Note the following sizing results for the Replication Copy as you will need them for the
final sizing
a. VSNAP Quantity is calculated to 1 vSnap servers with a capacity of 182.7 TB.
b. The Peak VSNAP Front End Rate is listed at 1.3 Gbps.
3. Note the following sizing results for the Offload Copy
a. The Offload Capacity Estimate represents the estimated amount of cloud object
storage (or Spectrum Protect storage) that will be consumed for the offloaded
copies. For this exercise that number should be 487.5 TiB
b. The Offload Rate is listed at 5.1 Gbps.
c. A cloud cache of 1536 GiB (1.5 TiB) will be required on the vSnap server in the
Secondary Site.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool
Sizing example for the Secondary Site
Now we will size the Secondary Site which contains the Oracle database data.
1. Save a copy of the sizing spreadsheet named for the Secondary Site so that you do not
accidently overwrite your worksheet.
2. Select Enable Content to enable macros in the spreadsheet.
3. Select the Start Here worksheet.
a. Select Click to reset the data in the spreadsheet.
b. Set the VSNAP Enable Dedup cell to “Yes”.
4. Select the Application-1 worksheet to fill-in the information for Oracle
a. Enter “2.5%” for Daily Change rate.
b. In the Silver Policy column, enter and/or verify the following values in the
Backup Frequency box
i. “200” for Front End (TiB)
ii. “1” “Day(s)” for Backup Frequency
iii. “8” for Backup Duration Hr(s)
iv. “30” for Retention Day(s)
v. “Yes” for Backup Logs?
c. In the Silver Policy column, enter and/or verify the following values in the
Replication Policy box
i. “Yes” for Replication Policy?
ii. “12” for Daily Replication Duration Hr(s)
iii. “30” for Replication Retention Day(s)
d. In the Silver Policy column, enter and/or verify the following values in the
Offload Policy box
i. “No” for Offload Policy?
5. Select the Sizing Results worksheet.
a. For Preferred VSNAP Size (TiB) select “200”
We will now check the sizing results for the Secondary Site as calculated on the Sizing Results
worksheet. Since we are sizing for a three-year period, we will be looking at the column labeled
Projected 2 Year.
1. Note the following sizing results for the Primary Copy as you will need them for the final
sizing
a. VSNAP Quantity is calculated to 1 vSnap server with a capacity of 130.5 TB.
b. VADP Quantity is calculated to 0 VADP proxies since there is no VMware vSphere
data being protected at this site.
d. The Peak VSNAP Front End Rate is listed at 1.8 Gbps. Considering the vSnap
servers has a 10 Gbps network, the network should be sufficient for the
estimated rates.
2. Note the following sizing results for the Replication Copy as you will need them for the
final sizing
a. VSNAP Quantity is calculated to 1 vSnap server with a capacity of 130.5 TB.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 3. How to Use the Sizing Tool
b. The Peak VSNAP Front End Rate is listed at 0.6 Gbps Considering the vSnap
servers have a 10 Gbps network, the network should be sufficient for the
estimated rates.
Calculating the final sizing
The last step is to calculate the final sizing of the environment based on the individual sizing
results for each site.
The Primary Site requires 1 vSnap servers with a total capacity of 182.7 TB for the primary
backup data plus an additional vSnap server with a total capacity of 130.5 TB for the replicated
data received from the Secondary Site. It also requires 1 VADP proxy. This is a total of 2 vSnap
servers with a total capacity of 313.2 TB capacity. The Primary Site will have a peak vSnap frontend rate of 4.0 Gbps for the primary backup data plus 0.6 Gbps for the data replicated from the
Secondary Site.
The Secondary Site requires 1 vSnap server with a total capacity of 130.5 TB for the primary
backup data plus an additional 1 vSnap servers with a total capacity of 182.7 TB for the
replicated data received from the Primary Site. This is a total of 2 vSnap servers with a total
capacity of 313.2 TB capacity. The Secondary Site will have a peak vSnap front-end rate of 1.8
Gbps for the primary backup data plus 1.3 Gbps for the data replicated from the Primary Site.
The WAN bandwidth required between the sites for replication is 1.9 Gbps (the sum of 0.6 Gbps
and 1.3 Gbps).
Site
vSnap Calculated
Capacity
vSnap Quantity
VADP Proxies
Primary Site
313.2 TB
2 x 200 TB
Secondary Site
313.2 TB
2 x 200 TB
1
(This is deployed on
the same systems as
one of the vSnap
servers)
0
Table 1: Example sizing results
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Blueprints
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration Blueprints
This chapter examines the hardware references that have been tested in the lab. You might be
able to substitute hardware from other vendors with equivalent specifications.
Hardware recommendations for vSnap servers
The following table shows recommended CPU, memory, and disk configurations for use with
compression and deduplication. This table will be used as a reference in this chapter.
In general, you should round-up the results from the sizing tool based on the following table.
For example, if the sizing tool indicates that you need 30 TB of capacity, you should build to the
50 TB configuration. If the sizing tool indicates that you need > 200 TB of capacity, you should
build based on increments of 200 TB. For example, if the sizing tool indicates you need 300 TB
of capacity you should build 2 x 200 TB vSnap servers. It is also recommended that you
provision all vSnap servers within the same site with identical sizes, so they will be optimized
for load balancing.
Log and cache will help optimize general vSnap server performance.
•
•
•
The log is used to optimize write performance for database application log backups and
for data re-use operations. Starting in IBM Spectrum Protect Version 10.1.3 the log is no
longer used during backup operations. The log is considered optional.
The cache is used to optimize backups using deduplication and performance for data reuse scenarios.
The purpose of the cloud cache is reviewed in Chapter 7. Configuring Cloud Object Storage
Offload
•
Note: It is recommended to build a single vSnap server with a maximum usable capacity
of 400 TB (compression only) or 200 TB (deduplication and compression) to optimize
performance
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Blueprints
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration
Hardware recommendations for combined vSnap server and VADP proxy
The following hardware recommendations are for deployments using the same system to host
the vSnap server and VADP proxy components. These are the general guidelines that are used
in the sizing tool. The sizing tool will provide you with a more precise recommendation based
on your environment.
Capacity
CPU1
Memory
Storage
Pool2
Log3
Cache3
(Optional)
1 TB
8 cores
40 GB
none
none
10 TB
25 TB
50 TB
100 TB
200 TB
8 cores
10 cores
16 cores
24 cores
30 cores
40 GB
56 GB
56 GB
96 GB
176 GB
2 x 500
GB
5 x 2 TB
5 x 5 TB
5 x 10 TB
10 x 10 TB
10 x 20 TB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
none
none
100 GB
200 GB
500 GB
Cloud
Cache3,4
VADP
soft
cap
4
128 GB
500 GB
750 GB
1 TB
1.5 TB
1.5 TB
4
4
8
12
12
Table 2 - Recommendations when using vSnap deduplication, compression, and encryption –
combined vSnap server and VADP proxy
Capacity
CPU 1
Memory
Storage
Pool2
Log3
Cache3
(Optional)
1 TB
8 cores
24 GB
None
none
10 TB
25 TB
50 TB
100 TB
200 TB
400 TB
8 cores
8 cores
14 cores
18 cores
20 cores
24 cores
24 GB
24 GB
40 GB
48 GB
64 GB
64 GB
2 x 500
GB
5 x 2 TB
5 x 5 TB
5 x 10 TB
10 x 10 TB
10 x 20 TB
20 x 20 TB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
none
none
100 GB
200 GB
500 GB
500 GB
Cloud
Cache3,4
128 GB
500 GB
750 GB
1 TB
1.5 TB
1.5 TB
1.5 TB
VADP
soft
cap
4
4
4
8
12
12
16
Table 3 - Recommendations when using vSnap compression and encryption – combined vSnap server and VADP proxy
1
As an example of CPUs tested see tables listed later in this chapter.
2
If you have LUN sizes that are not the same as in the table, you can use other sizes. Approximate the
total size of the storage pool you are allocating and try to use at least 2 or 3 LUNs. For example, if the
table indicates 5 x 10 TB LUNs it can be acceptable to use a configuration that provides approximately
the same amount of total storage such as 6 x 8 TB LUNs.
3
Log, cache and cloud cache should be placed on SSD Flash or NVMe to optimize performance.
4
For more information about the cloud object storage cache see Chapter 7. Configuring Cloud Object
Storage Offload
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Blueprints
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration
Hardware recommendations for dedicated vSnap server
The following hardware recommendations are for vSnap servers in deployments using different
systems to host the vSnap server and VADP proxy components. These are the general
guidelines that are used in the sizing tool. The sizing tool will provide you with a more precise
recommendation based on your environment.
Capacity
CPU1
Memory
1 TB
10 TB
25 TB
50 TB
100 TB
200 TB
4 cores
4 cores
6 cores
8 cores
12 cores
18 cores
32 GB
32 GB
48 GB
48 GB
80 GB
160 GB
Storage
Pool2
2 x 500 GB
5 x 2 TB
5 x 5 TB
5 x 10 TB
10 x 10 TB
10 x 20 TB
Log3
(Optional)
none
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
Cache3
none
none
none
100 GB
200 GB
500 GB
Cloud
Cache3,4
128 GB
500 GB
750 GB
1 TB
1.5 TB
1.5 TB
Table 4 - Recommendations when using vSnap deduplication, compression, and encryption – vSnap server only
Capacity
CPU 1
Memory
1 TB
10 TB
25 TB
50 TB
100 TB
200 TB
400 TB
4 cores
4 cores
4 cores
6 cores
6 cores
8 cores
8 cores
16 GB
16 GB
16 GB
32 GB
32 GB
48 GB
48 GB
Storage
Pool2
2 x 500 GB
5 x 2 TB
5 x 5 TB
5 x 10 TB
10 x 10 TB
10 x 20 TB
20 x 20 TB
Log3
(Optional)
none
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
2 x 10 GB
Cache3
none
none
none
100 GB
200 GB
500 GB
500 GB
Cloud
Cache3,4
128 GB
500 GB
750 GB
1 TB
1.5 TB
1.5 TB
1.5 TB
Table 5 - Recommendations when using vSnap compression and encryption – vSnap server only
1
As an example of CPUs tested see tables listed later in this chapter.
2
If you have LUN sizes that are not the same as in the table, you can use other sizes. Approximate the
total size of the storage pool you are allocating and try to use at least 2 or 3 LUNs. For example, if the
table indicates 5 x 10 TB LUNs it can be acceptable to use a configuration that provides approximately
the same amount of total storage such as 6 x 8 TB LUNs.
3
Log, cache and cloud cache should be placed on SSD Flash or NVMe to optimize performance.
4
For more information about the cloud object storage cache see Chapter 7. Configuring Cloud Object
Storage Offload
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Blueprints
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration
Hardware recommendations for dedicated VADP proxy
The following hardware recommendations are for vSnap servers in deployments using different
systems to host the vSnap server and VADP proxy components. These recommendations are
based on the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus system requirements.
•
•
•
A minimum of 8 GB of RAM is required (16 GB recommended)
64-bit 8-core processor
32 GB RAM
The sizing tool will provide more specific resource recommendations based on the workload. The values
listed below are the minimum recommended values based on the vSnap server capacity. The table is
based on the use of HotAdd or SAN transport methods; if you choose to use NBDSSL (with or without
NBDSSL compression) the sizing tool will provide higher CPU results based on the workload.
vSnap
Capacity
1 TB
10 TB
25 TB
50 TB
100 TB
200 TB
400 TB
CPU1
Memory
VADP soft cap
4 cores
4 cores
4 cores
8 cores
12 cores
12 cores
16 cores
8 GB
8 GB
8 GB
8 GB
16 GB
16 GB
16 GB
Use All Resources
Use All Resources
Use All Resources
Use All Resources
Use All Resources
Use All Resources
Use All Resources
Table 6 – Dedicated VADP proxy recommendations
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Blueprints
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration
The following sections provide detailed specifications for storage layout. Use them as a map
when you set up and configure your hardware. If you deviate from the specifications listed in
this section, you must account for any changes when you configure your storage.
Blueprint for vSnap server
This section provides a blueprint for a dedicated vSnap server.
Hardware requirements for physical vSnap server with software defined RAID
The following hardware was used for a physical vSnap server using redundancy provided by the
vSnap software. Customization, for example using drive sizes smaller then 10TB, can be made
for smaller environments. 10TB drives were used to optimize capacity.
Blueprint
component
Supermicro
SuperStorage
Server used
as a vSnap
server
Requirements
•
•
•
•
•
•
16 CPU
cores, 3.2
GHz or
faster
384 GB
RAM
10Gb
Ethernet
36 x NLSAS
drives
2 x 1.6 TB
NVMe
2x
480GB
SAS OS
drives
Detailed description
Supermicro SuperStorage
Server
Intel Xeon Gold 6134 CPU (8
cores, 3.2 GHz, 25 MB
cache)
RDIMM DRx4 32 GB 2666
Quantity Part
number
1
6049P-E1 CR36H
2
P4X-SKL6134-SR3
12
MEM-DR432L-SL02ER26 Samsung
M393A4K40BB2-CTD
Samsung
K4A8G045WB-BCTD 2
RoHS Low Profile
HDD-A10T-SM0F27576
10 TB NL-SAS 3.5”,
SAS12Gb/s, 7.2K RPM
drives
36
Micron 9200 MAX
1.6TB NVMe PCIe3.0 3D
TLC 2.5" 15mm
2
HDS-2VDMTFDHAL1T6TCU1AR
Micron 5100 PRO
2.5"480GB, SATA,6Gb/s,
2
HDS-2TDMTFDDAK480TCB1AR
Dual port Intel 10GbE with
SFP
Avago MegaRAID adapter
1
AOC-STGN-I2S
1
Table 7 - Supermicro SuperStorage Server reference
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Blueprints
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration
Blueprints for multi-purpose storage and hypervisor
This section provides blueprints for multi-purpose storage servers. These servers can be used
for the vSnap servers, VADP proxies, and for the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server virtual
appliance.
The first blueprint demonstrates using a Supermicro Superserver as a hypervisor to host the
Spectrum Protect Plus components. The second blueprint demonstrates using the IBM Storwize
v5020 to provide storage for the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus components.
Example hypervisor for running virtualized Spectrum Protect Plus server, vSnap
server, and VADP proxies
The following is the specification used during testing for the hypervisor hosting virtual machines
for the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server, virtual vSnap storage servers, and VADP proxy
servers. This example is given to use as a reference of a configuration proven to be suitable for
this purpose rather than as exact minimum specifications. The requirements listed below will
be adequate to host the Spectrum Protect Plus server and several vSnap servers and VADP
proxies.
Blueprint
Component
Supermicro
Superserver
used as a
hypervisor
Requirements
•
•
•
•
•
44 CPU
cores
768 GB
RAM
10Gb
Ethernet
16Gb
Fibre
channel
2 x 1 TB
SAS OS
drives
Detailed description
Supermicro Superserver 2U
Quantity Part
number
1
2028U-E1CNRT+OTO-22
Intel Xeon E5-2699 v4, 22C,
2.2 Ghz, 55MB Cache
2
P4X-DPE52699V4SR2JS
32 GB DDR4-2400 ECC REG
DIMM
Seagate 2.5” 1TB SAS3
12Gb/s 7.2K RPM
24
MEM-DR432L-CL02ER24
HDD-2A1000ST1000NX0453
Dual port Intel 10GbE with
SFP
Emulex LPe16002B-M6
16G Fibre Channel HBA
1
AOC-STGN-I2S
1
AOC-LPE16002B-M6O
2
Table 8 - Supermicro SuperStorage Server hypervisor reference
36
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Blueprints
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration
Example storage system to provide storage for vSnap server with storage hardware
defined RAID
The following IBM Storwize v5020 system is well suited to providing storage for various IBM
Spectrum Protect Plus components such as storage capacity for vSnap storage servers, as well
as for the operating systems disks for the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server, virtual vSnap
storage servers, and VADP proxy systems. This example is given to use as a reference of a
configuration proven to be suitable for this purpose rather than as exact minimum
specifications. This example gives enough capacity for pRDM LUNs for several vSnap servers as
well as providing storage for datastores to host virtual machines. Customization, for example
using drive sizes smaller then 6TB, or using 4 Flash modules instead of 8, can be made for
smaller environments.
Note: Use thick provisioned LUNs.
Blueprint
Component
IBM Storwize
v5020 disk
system used
as storage for
IBM
Spectrum
Protect Plus
Requirements
•
•
•
•
•
V5020 SFF
control
16Gb FC
host ports
8 x 1.9 TB
Flash
drives
92 drive
LFF
expansion
92 x 6TB
NL-SAS
Detailed description
V5020 SFF Control
Quantity Part
number
1
2077-224
16Gb FC Adapter Pair
1
AC0B
1.9TB 2.5 Inch Flash Drive
V5000 HD LFF Expansion
6
1
ACN0
2077-92F
6TB 7.2K 3.5 Inch NL HDD
92
ACP7
3m 12Gb SAS Cable
2
ACUC
Table 9 - IBM Storwize v5020 reference
37
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Blueprints
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration
Storage configuration for the IBM Storwize v5020
The following configuration was used for configuring arrays on the Storwize v5020, using
distributed arrays. The flash storage was used for providing log and cache storage for vSnap
servers, as well as for creating datastores to use with VMware for providing virtual disk capacity
for operating system disks. The NL-SAS storage was used across four DRAID6 distributed arrays
shared in a single virtualized pool to provide capacity for vSnap pool storage.
Server
Storage
requirement
Disk
type
Disk
quantity
Hot
Spare
coverage
LOG, cache,
and OS
datastores
vSnap pool
capacity
RAID
type
RAID
Array
quantity
Usable
size
1.9 TB
Tier1
flash
6
1
Rebuildareas=1
DRAID6
1
6 DDM
5.16TB
6 TB
NLSAS
92
4
Rebuildareas=2
per array
DRAID6
2
46 DDM
197.91 TB
each
395.82 TB
total
Suggested
storage
pool and
MDisk
names
Pool = SSD
/ ssd_array
Pool =
NLSAS
Array1
Array2
Table 10 - IBM Storwize MDisk configuration
Use the table above for guidance on creating arrays and adding storage to create MDisk and
storage pools. You will then need to create volumes based on the quantities and sizes listed in
the beginning of this chapter. After volume creation, assign the volume to the VMware vSphere
hosts, physical machines or both depending on choice of physical or virtual server.
Note: When you create volumes don’t use thin provisioned volumes. (Capacity savings = None).
For example, to host the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus virtual appliance you would first create a
400 GB volume from the SSD pool. After the volume is created, you will assign the volume to
the VMware vSphere host or hostcluster that will be hosting the virtual appliance.
38
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
Configuring a virtual vSnap server using storage hardware defined RAID
This example illustrates how to implement the vSnap server component within a virtual
machine where the RAID protection is being provided by the storage hardware. Storage is
assigned to the virtual machine as a physical RDM type disk. The exception to this is the
operating system disk which is deployed as a virtual disk into an existing datastore as part of
the virtual appliance deployment.
Note: Use vSnap RAID 0 when the storage LUNs being used already have RAID redundancy
provisioned by the storage hardware.
Use the following steps to configure a virtual vSnap server using storage hardware provided
RAID:
1. Deploy the vSnap virtual appliance (OVT template installation file) as documented in the
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Installation and User’s Guide.
2. Prior to powering on the newly deployed virtual machine, edit the hardware settings for
the machine as follows using recommendations from the previous table:
a. Adjust the number of virtual CPUs according to the planned vSnap capacity. For
our testing, we allocated CPU cores across two sockets.
b. Adjust the amount of virtual RAM according to the planned vSnap capacity.
c. Delete the 100 GB virtual disk that was created during virtual machine import as
that storage will not be used. This disk is reported as Hard disk 2.
Note: After deleting this disk, the virtual machine should now contain only a 50
GB Hard disk 1 and a 128 GB Hard disk 2.
d. If you will be performing data offload to cloud object storage (Hard disk 2) or the
Spectrum Protect server, increase the size of the 128 GB virtual disk if you have
determined that more capacity is required for the cloud cache
e. Attach all required storage pool, log, and cache LUNs as physical RDM disks using
the recommended size and quantity according to the preceding table. For
example, the following is recommended for a vSnap with 50 TB of capacity:
i. 5 x 10 TB storage pools (Hard disk 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7)
ii. 2 x 20 GB log (Hard disk 8, 9)
iii. 100 GB cache (Hard disk 10)
3. Power on the vSnap virtual machine. After the system boots, connect to the vSnap
system using ssh and log in as serveradmin using the default password of sppDP758. You
will be prompted to change the default password to a secure password. Confirm that
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
network connectivity is set up correctly by issuing a ping to other systems on the
network. If there is a problem with network connectivity, it can be corrected using the
nmtui program.
4. Complete the configuration of a vSnap storage pool by following these steps from the
ssh terminal:
a. Initialize vSnap:
vsnap system init --skip_pool
b. Create a vSnap user and set a secure password for this user:
vsnap user create
Note: This an interactive command. You will be prompted for Username and
Password.
c. List the disks assigned to vSnap and carefully review the list to identify the disks
that were assigned as pRDM disks. Note the NAME field reported for each of
these disks to be used in the vsnap pool commands that follow.
Note: The rescan command is usually not necessary, but it is helpful in cases
where additional disks are assigned to the system after it has been powered on.
Note: You can typically identify the disks by their sizes.
ATTENTION: Other disks such as operating system disks are listed in this output,
and care must be taken not to include those disks in any commands which
follow.
vsnap disk rescan
vsnap disk show
The following is the expected output for a vSnap server with 50 TB of capacity.
The disks must show as unused to be used with a new vSnap pool. If the disks
are not listed as unused, then there is the possibility that some other operating
system feature is using them, or they were used previously for some other
purpose. There is a vsnap support command that can clear a disk in cases where
you are absolutely certain it is safe to do so. Refer to the section Erasing a disk in
the appendix.
UUID
< … > | TYPE | VENDOR | MODEL
| SIZE
| USED AS
| NAME
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------36000c295a4e<…>c5579 | SCSI | VMware | Virtual disk | 50.00GB | xfs
| /dev/sda
36000c29e938<…>1f415 | SCSI | VMware | Virtual disk | 120.00GB | LVM_member| /dev/sdb
40
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
360050763808<…>0004d
360050763808<…>0004e
360050763808<…>0004f
360050763808<…>00050
360050763808<…>00051
360050763808<…>00065
360050763808<…>00065
360050763808<…>00067
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
SCSI
SCSI
SCSI
SCSI
SCSI
SCSI
SCSI
SCSI
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
IBM
IBM
IBM
IBM
IBM
IBM
IBM
IBM
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2145
2145
2145
2145
2145
2145
2145
2145
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.00TB
10.00TB
10.00TB
10.00TB
10.00TB
20.00GB
20.00GB
100.00GB
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
unused
unused
unused
unused
unused
unused
unused
unused
|
|
|
|
|
|
| /dev/sdc
| /dev/sdd
/dev/sde
/dev/sdf
/dev/sdg
/dev/sdh
/dev/sdi
/dev/sdj
d. Create the vSnap storage pool with compression enabled and optionally
deduplication enabled based on the technology choice you made earlier in this
document. The disks used for the disk list might need to be adjusted based on
what was reported in the output of the command in the previous step.
Compression only:
vsnap pool create --name primary --disk_list
/dev/sdc,/dev/sdd,/dev/sde,/dev/sdf,/dev/sdg -pool_type raid0 --deduplication off --compression on
Compression, deduplication, and encryption
vsnap pool create --name primary --disk_list
/dev/sdc,/dev/sdd,/dev/sde,/dev/sdf,/dev/sdg -pool_type raid0 --deduplication on --compression on
-–encryption on –-enc_type disk
Note: You can choose not to deduplicate, compress, and/or encrypt data.
Change the parameters of the deduplication, compression, or encryption options
to “off” where applicable, for example: -–encryption off
Note: You can only specify the use of encryption when a vsnap pool is created.
Compression and deduplication can be changed on a vsnap pool at any time.
e. For configurations that will use a log on high-performing disk, run the following
command. Optionally, you can specify two devices for a mirrored log as follows:
vsnap pool addlog --id 1 --disk_list=/dev/sdh,/dev/sdi
f. For configurations that will use a cache on high-performing disk, run the
following command:
vsnap pool addcache --id 1 --disk_list /dev/sdj
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
g. Run the following command to verify that your pool was created: successfully.
vsnap pool show
The following example is for a pool with 50 TB of capacity:
TOTAL: 1
ID: 1
NAME: primary
POOL TYPE: raid0
STATUS: ONLINE
HEALTH: 100
COMPRESSION: Yes
COMPRESSION RATIO: 3.10
DEDUPLICATION: Yes
DEDUPLICATION RATIO: 1.15
ENCRYPTION:
ENABLED: Yes
TYPE: disk
SYNC WRITE: Yes
TOTAL SPACE: 48.13TB
FREE SPACE: 47.97TB
USED SPACE: 163.81GB
DATA SIZE BEFORE DEDUPLICATION: 188.37GB
DATA SIZE BEFORE COMPRESSION: 581.63GB
CREATED: 2018-03-13 00:07:33 UTC
UPDATED: 2018-03-13 00:08:36 UTC
DISKS PER RAID GROUP: 1
DISKS IN POOL:
CACHE:
/dev/sdj1
LOG:
/dev/sdh1
/dev/sdi1
RAID0:
/dev/sdc1
/dev/sdd1
/dev/sde1
/dev/sdf1
/dev/sdg1
42
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
Configuring a physical vSnap server using storage software provided RAID
This example illustrates how to implement the vSnap server component within a physical server
using the software RAID 6 protection being provided by the vSnap server. Storage is provided
by near line (NL) SAS drives internal to the vSnap server that are presented from the SAS
controller as a JBOD. The physical server will be provisioned with Linux during the workflow. In
this example we will demonstrate building a vSnap server with approximately 200 TB of usable
storage.
Use the following steps to configure a physical vSnap server using the software provided RAID
from the vSnap server:
1. Configure the system integrated management module that makes it simpler to remotely
perform tasks such as configuring the system BIOS as demonstrated in the next step.
2. Prepare the BIOS settings. The following settings require adjustment:
a. Create a RAID1 mirror of the two operating system boot disks using the
integrated Intel® RSTe sSATA Controller.
b. Set the system to use UEFI.
3. Install a Linux operating system that is supported for the vSnap component. Testing was
performed using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5. The following installation choices were
made:
a. Software selection is Server with GUI, and an add-on including Development
Tools.
b. The installation target was the 424.77 GiB BIOS RAID set (mirror). Default
partitioning was adjusted to provision at least 300 GB to the root file system (/).
c. The recommended Swap size of 16 GB was used
d. Network settings and default passwords were selected.
Note: It is recommended that you allocate at least 300 GB to the root file system
(/) and at least 16 GB to Swap.
4. Perform additional operating system configuration after the system successfully boots
for the first time.
a. Enable an update subscription so that the operating system can be updated to
the latest updates using the yum update command. The vSnap software cannot
be installed without completing this step.
b. Install the device driver for the Avago MegaRAID adapter and the MegaRAID
storage manager software:
(Note: Ensure that the MegaRAID storage manager software is current).
ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SAS/LSI/3108/
gzip -d megaraid_sas-07.702.06.00-src.tar.gz
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
tar -xvf megaraid_sas-07.702.06.00-src.tar
cd megaraid_sas-07.702.06.00/
./compile.sh
modinfo megaraid_sas
tar -xvf MSM_linux_x64_installer-17.05.00-02.tar
cd disk
./RunRPM.sh
c. Put the NL-SAS disks in JBOD mode:
/opt/MegaRAID/storcli/storcli64 /c0 set jbod=on
5. Install the vSnap server software:
chmod +x vsnap-dist-10.1.2-45.run
./vsnap-dist-10.1.2-45.run
(Note: 10.1.2-45 is the version of the vSnap server software as of publication of this
document. This is subject to change with the introduction of software patches in the
future and these commands should be adjusted accordingly).
6. Complete the configuration of a vSnap storage pool by following these steps:
a. Initialize vSnap:
vsnap system init --skip_pool
b. Create a vSnap user and set a secure password for this user. For example, name the
user vsnap1.
vsnap user create
Note: This an interactive command. You will be prompted for Username and
Password.
c. List the disks assigned to vSnap and carefully review the list of disks to identify
the disks that were assigned as physical RDM disks. Note the NAME field
reported for each of these disks to be used in the vsnap pool commands that
follow.
Note: The rescan command is usually not necessary, but it is helpful in cases
where additional disks are assigned to the system after it has been powered on.
44
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
Note: You can typically identify the disks by their sizes.
ATTENTION: Other disks such as operating system disks are listed in this output,
and care must be taken not to include those disks in any commands which
follow:
vsnap disk rescan
vsnap disk show
The following is the expected output for the case of a vSnap server with a 205 TB
capacity. The disks must show as unused to be used with a new vSnap pool. If
the disks are not listed as unused then there is the possibility some other
operating system feature is using them, or they were used previously for some
other purpose. There is a vsnap support command that can clear a disk in cases
where you are absolutely certain it is safe to do so. Refer to the section Erasing a
disk in the appendix.
UUID
| TYPE | VENDOR | MODEL
| SIZE
| USED AS | NAME
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------35000cca26c25cc44 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sda
35000cca26c255288 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdaa
35000cca26c25aab4 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdab
35000cca26c25aa58 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdac
35000cca26c24c928 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdad
35000cca26c25aae8 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdae
35000cca26c25a3fc | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdaf
35000cca26b6063d4 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdag
35000cca26c25a32c | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdah
35000cca26c25cdb0 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdai
35000cca26c2551ec | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdaj
Micron_5100_MT<…>E | ATA | ATA
| Micron_5100_MTFD | 447.13GB | vfat
| /dev/sdak
Micron_5100_MT<…>B | ATA | ATA
| Micron_5100_MTFD | 447.13GB | vfat
| /dev/sdal
35000cca26c259a54 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdb
35000cca26b951104 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdc
35000cca26c245844 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdd
35000cca26b9df564 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sde
35000cca26c223b60 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdf
35000cca26b9cabdc | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdg
35000cca26c24ca14 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdh
35000cca26c245724 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdi
35000cca26c25d6f8 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdj
35000cca26c25a804 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdk
35000cca26c257a10 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdl
35000cca26c25a10c | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdm
35000cca26c25cf0c | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdn
35000cca26c25cd9c | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdo
35000cca26c25d0b8 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdp
35000cca26c24c8cc | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdq
35000cca26b606708 | SCSI | HGST
| HUH721010AL5200 | 9.10TB
| unused | /dev/sdr
d. Create a Linux Multiple Device driver (md) device to store the vSnap storage
cache, cloud cache and logs. Two NVMe devices will be used with software RAID
10 to back the md device.
i. Create the raid10 md device
mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=raid10
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
--raid-devices=2 /dev/nvme0n1 /dev/nvme1n1
ii. Monitor progress of the initialization of the raid. You will see output like
below, where md0 is the newly created device, and md126 is the
mirrored OS boot drives
cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1] [raid10]
md0 : active raid10 nvme0n1[0] nvme1n1[1]
937560064 blocks super 1.2 2 near-copies [2/2] [UU]
bitmap: 0/7 pages [0KB], 65536KB chunk
md126 : active raid1 sdak[1] sdal[0]
445431808 blocks super external:/md127/0 [2/2] [UU]
iii. Create three partitions on the md device: a log partition, a cache partition and
a cloud cache partition.
fdisk /dev/md0
iv. Set the new md device to automatically start during system boot
(Note: Do not to run this command more than one time)
mdadm --detail --scan | grep /dev/md0 >> /etc/mdadm.conf
e. Create the vSnap storage pool with compression enabled and optionally
deduplication enabled using 35 of the 10TB NL-SAS drives. The disks used for the
disk list might need to be adjusted based on what was reported in the output of
the command in the previous step. The expected result is that a pool consisting
of 5 separate arrays each with 7 disks will be created.
Compression, deduplication, and encryption
vsnap pool create --name primary --disk_list
/dev/sda,/dev/sdb,/dev/sdc,/dev/sdd,/dev/sde,/dev/sdf,
/dev/sdg,/dev/sdh,/dev/sdi,/dev/sdj,/dev/sdk,/dev/sdl,
/dev/sdm,/dev/sdn,/dev/sdo,/dev/sdp,/dev/sdq,/dev/sdr,
/dev/sds,/dev/sdt,/dev/sdu,/dev/sdv,/dev/sdw,/dev/sdx,
/dev/sdy,/dev/sdz,/dev/sdaa,/dev/sdab,/dev/sdac,/dev/s
dad,/dev/sdae,/dev/sdaf,/dev/sdag,/dev/sdah,/dev/sdai
--pool_type raid6
--compression on --deduplication on
-–encryption on –-enc_type disk
Note: You can choose not to deduplicate, compress, and/or encrypt data.
Change the parameters of the deduplication, compression, or encryption options
to “off” where applicable, for example: -–encryption off
46
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
Note: You can only specify the use of encryption when a vsnap pool is created.
Compression and deduplication can be changed on a vsnap pool at any time.
f. Define the last 10 TB NL-SAS drive as a spare:
vsnap pool addspare --id 1 --disk_list /dev/sdaj
g. Define the first NVMe drive as the log:
vsnap pool addlog --id 1 --disk_list /dev/md0p1 –-force
h. Expand the cloud cache if the size of the cache virtual disk was increased in an
earlier step. For more information about expanding the size of the cloud cache
refer to Expanding the cache area if it already exists.
i.
Define the second NVMe drive as a cache:
vsnap pool addcache --id 1 --disk_list /dev/md0p2 –-force
j.
Verify that your pool was created successfully:
vsnap pool show
ID: 1
NAME: primary
POOL TYPE: raid6
STATUS: ONLINE
HEALTH: 100
COMPRESSION: Yes
COMPRESSION RATIO: 1.00
DEDUPLICATION: Yes
DEDUPLICATION RATIO: 1.00
ENCRYPTION:
ENABLED: Yes
TYPE: disk
SYNC WRITE: Yes
TOTAL SPACE: 205.11TB
FREE SPACE: 204.85TB
USED SPACE: 2.18MB
DATA SIZE BEFORE DEDUPLICATION: 935.09KB
DATA SIZE BEFORE COMPRESSION: 101.50KB
CREATED: 2018-03-02 01:28:36 UTC
UPDATED: 2018-03-08 23:28:39 UTC
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
DISKS PER RAID GROUP: 7
DISKS IN POOL:
CACHE:
/dev/md0p2
LOG:
/dev/md0p1
RAID6 GROUP1:
/dev/sda1
/dev/sdb1
/dev/sdc1
/dev/sdd1
/dev/sde1
/dev/sdf1
/dev/sdg1
RAID6 GROUP2:
/dev/sdh1
/dev/sdi1
/dev/sdj1
/dev/sdk1
/dev/sdl1
/dev/sdm1
/dev/sdn1
RAID6 GROUP3:
/dev/sdo1
/dev/sdp1
/dev/sdq1
/dev/sdr1
/dev/sds1
/dev/sdt1
/dev/sdu1
RAID6 GROUP4:
/dev/sdv1
/dev/sdw1
/dev/sdx1
/dev/sdy1
/dev/sdz1
/dev/sdaa1
/dev/sdab1
RAID6 GROUP5:
/dev/sdac1
/dev/sdad1
/dev/sdae1
/dev/sdaf1
/dev/sdag1
/dev/sdah1
/dev/sdai1
SPARE:
/dev/sdaj1
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 5. vSnap Server Installation and Setup
Adding a backup storage provider
Now that after you have configured the vSnap server, you will need to register each instance of
a vSnap server to the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server from the server user interface.
Procedure
1. If you are certain that no data has been stored in the default vSnap server that is part of
the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server virtual appliance, unregister the default backup
storage provider that comes with the appliance. From the navigation menu, click Backup
Storage. Locate the localhost backup storage provider and click the “x” to unregister the
localhost backup storage provider. You will be prompted to confirm the action.
2. Register the backup storage providers that were installed in the previous chapter. From
the navigation menu, click Backup Storage and click Add. You will need to provide the
hostname/IP, credentials (UserId vsnap1 and Password created in prior steps), and
register the backup storage provider to the desired site.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 6. Configuring VADP Proxies
Chapter 6. Configuring VADP Proxies
After the vSnap servers have been installed and the backup storage providers have all been
registered, the final step is to install the VADP proxies that were sized in Chapter 3. How to Use
the Sizing Tool.
•
Note: You can install the vSnap server (backup storage provider) and VADP proxy on the
same physical or virtual system. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus will optimize data
movement by eliminating an NFS mount when these two systems are co-located
Installing VADP proxies
1. Install the combined VADP proxy and vSnap server virtual machine image (the VADP
component can be used even if the vSnap server component is left unused)
or
Install operating system. You must first install a supported operating system.
2. Suspend the default proxy that comes with the virtual appliance. This can be done from
the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus interface. Expand the System menu and select VADP
Proxy. Locate the localhost entry in the table of VADP Proxies, expand the Actions
button and select Suspend.
3. Install the VADP proxy. This can be done from the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus interface.
Expand the System menu and select VADP Proxy. Select the “+” button to add a proxy.
Provide the hostname and credentials and select Install.
4. Register the VADP proxy. After the installation, you will need to register the VADP proxy.
Locate the VADP proxy that you just installed on the panel. Select the appropriate site
from the pulldown menu and select Register.
5. Configure the VADP proxy options. Expand the Actions button next to the VADP proxy
that was added in the last step and select Set Options.
a. Transport Modes – Remove transport modes that the proxy is not capable of
using. For example, if you are using a virtual VADP Proxy, remove the san
transport. If you are using a physical VADP proxy, remove the hotadd transport.
You should also order the remaining transports in order of preferred usage.
Also consider removing the advanced transports, san and hotadd, after the
initial full backups are complete and the system is in steady-state where it is
predominantly taking incremental backups and full backups of only new
machines because the advanced transports are better suited for full backup
workloads then incremental workloads.
b. Change the default Enable NBDSSL Compression to one of the listed compression
algorithms (libz, fastlz, or skipz). If you have a 1 GbE network between the
VMware host and VADP Proxy. If you have a 10 GbE network between the
VMware host and the VADP proxy use the default of disabled for Enable NBDSSL
Compression.
c. Use the default values for Log retention in days and Buffer Size in bytes.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 6. Configuring VADP Proxies
d. The Softcap task limit as noted below.
Setting the maximum number of VM’s to process concurrently
You can set the maximum number of VM’s to process concurrently. The default value is 3
concurrent VM’s per ESXi host. This value is configured as part of the vCenter management in
the Spectrum Protect Plus server user interface. The default value will be sufficient for most
workloads.
To change the maximum number of VM’s to process concurrently:
1. From the navigation menu, expand Hypervisor, expand VMware, and select Backup.
2. Select Manage vCenter
3. Select the vCenter from the menu and click on the pencil icon ( ) to change the
settings
4. Expand the Options setting and you will see the option to set this value.
Distributing workload to multiple VADP proxies
If you need to use multiple VADP proxies to protect your environment, it is important to
understand how workload is distributed among multiple VADP proxies.
1. It is recommended that you Suspend the default proxy that comes with the virtual
appliance as noted above. This will guarantee that the VADP proxy is not placing
additional workload on your IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server host.
2. To ensure multiple VADP proxies are optimally utilized to maximize data throughput,
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus will automatically distribute each virtual machine backup
task to the VADP proxy which has the most available memory and “free tasks” available
on the system to process VADP proxy requests. This load balancing is referred to as
“throttling” in IBM Spectrum Protect Plus documentation.
3. “Free tasks” are determined by the number of free CPU cores that the system has
designated to process VADP proxy requests. This number is governed by the Softcap
task limit that has been configured on the “Set VADP Proxy Options” panel on the VADP
Proxy page. The Softcap task limit should be set based on whether the VADP proxy is a
dedicated system or is collocated on a system with the vSnap server as follows:
a. If the VADP proxy is a dedicated system, the Softcap task limit should be set to
Use All Resources to enable the VADP proxy to maximize the CPU usage on the
system.
b. If the VADP proxy is collocated on a system with the vSnap server, the Softcap
task limit should be set according to the results in the sizing spreadsheet.
Note: The Softcap task limit cannot guarantee that the number of CPUs used by a VADP proxy
will always honor the user specified value.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 7. Configuring Cloud Object Storage Offload
Chapter 7. Configuring Cloud Object Storage Offload
For all offload operations (backup, recovery, data reuse) to cloud object storage or Spectrum
Protect each vSnap server requires a disk cache area (referred to as the cloud cache) to perform
the following functions:
•
•
During offload operations as a temporary staging area for objects that are pending
upload to the cloud object storage endpoint.
During restore operations to cache downloaded objects as well as to store any
temporary data that may be written into the restore volume.
Note: There is no disk cache needed for the archive operation.
Note: To use Spectrum Protect for offload or archive operations, refer to IBM Spectrum Protect
documentation to learn how to configure storage pools for these operations.
Most of the cache space is freed up at the end of each offload or restore, but a small amount
may continue to be used to cache metadata that will be used to speed up subsequent
operations.
The cache area must be configured in the form of an XFS filesystem mounted at
/opt/vsnap-data on the vSnap server. If this mount point is not configured, offload or restore
jobs will fail with the error: "Cloud functionality disabled: Data disk /opt/vsnap-data is not
configured."
Note: Do not unmount or manipulate files under /opt/vsnap-data while any offload or restore
jobs are active. Once you have ensured that no jobs are active, it is safe to perform any
maintenance activities such as unmounting and reconfiguring the cache area.
The data stored under /opt/vsnap-data is also safe to delete as long as no offload or restore
jobs are active, although deleting this data may result in vSnap having to re-download data
from the cloud object storage endpoint during the next offload or restore operation which in
turn may introduce a small delay during the job. You should only delete this data if directed to
perform this action by IBM support.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 7. Configuring Cloud Object Storage Offload
Default cloud cache area
Depending on the installation method and version of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus that was
initially deployed, a default cloud cache may or may not already be present on the system.
For new installations starting at version 10.1.3:
•
When the vSnap server is deployed as a virtual appliance, the cloud cache area is
already present as a pre-configured 128 GB data disk mounted at /opt/vsnap-data.
• When the vSnap server is installed on a custom server, the cloud cache area must be
configured manually.
For systems upgraded from version 10.1.2 to version 10.1.3:
•
A default, pre-configured cloud cache area of 128 GB may already be present and
mounted at /opt/vsnap-data if the system was previously deployed as a virtual
appliance starting with version 10.1.2. If the system was previously upgraded from
version 10.1.1, the cache area will not be present.
Use the "df" command on the vSnap server to confirm the presence of the mount point
/opt/vsnap-data. If the mount point is not present, it must be configured manually.
Sizing the cloud cache
Although the cloud cache area is sized at 128 GB as a starting point, it must be expanded based on the
size of the vSnap pool on that system. The table below shows some general recommendations for sizing
of the cache area. Refer to
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 7. Configuring Cloud Object Storage Offload
Chapter 4. Server and Storage Configuration Blueprints for complete sizing tables.
Size of pool
1 TB
10 TB
25 TB
50 TB
100 TB
200 TB or above
Size of cache area
128 GB
500 GB
750 GB
1 TB
1.5 TB
1.5 TB
Table 11 -Cloud cache sizing table
Recommended cloud cache disk technology
It is recommended to use flash storage for the cloud cache to improve offload and restore
performance. For some workloads SAS 10K drives might be acceptable based on performance
objectives.
Creating the cloud cache area
Note: The sample commands below assume they are being run as the user serveradmin. If
running as root, the sudo prefix can be omitted.
•
•
Attach one or more disks to the vSnap system. The cumulative size of the disk(s) should be
based on the sizing guidelines described above.
On the vSnap console, rescan to discover newly attached disk(s), then list them and identify
the name(s) e.g. /dev/sdx, /dev/sdy.
$ vsnap disk rescan
$ vsnap disk show
OR
$ sudo lsblk
•
Create a Physical Volume on each disk, then create a Volume Group named vsnapdata that
spans all the disks, and create a Logical Volume named vsnapdatalv.
$ sudo pvcreate /dev/sdx
$ sudo pvcreate /dev/sdy
$ sudo vgcreate vsnapdata /dev/sdx /dev/sdy
$ sudo lvcreate -l 100%VG -n vsnapdatalv vsnapdata
•
Create an XFS partition on the Logical Volume, create the mount point directory, and mount
the volume.
$ sudo mkfs.xfs /dev/mapper/vsnapdata-vsnapdatalv
$ sudo mkdir -p /opt/vsnap-data
$ sudo mount /dev/mapper/vsnapdata-vsnapdatalv /opt/vsnap-data
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
•
Chapter 7. Configuring Cloud Object Storage Offload
To ensure that the volume is remounted on reboot, edit the file /etc/fstab and append the
following line to the end of the file:
/dev/mapper/vsnapdata-vsnapdatalv
data xfs defaults 0 0
•
/opt/vsnap-
Run "df -h" and verify that the volume /opt/vsnap-data is mounted and has the desired size.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 7. Configuring Cloud Object Storage Offload
Expanding the cache area if it already exists
Note: The sample commands below assume they are being run as the user serveradmin. If
running as "root", the "sudo" prefix can be omitted.
•
Attach one or more disks to the vSnap system. The cumulative size of the disk(s) should
be based on the amount of space you want to add to the existing cache area. Use the
"df -h" command to view the existing size of the /opt/vsnap-data mount point.
•
On the vSnap console, rescan to discover newly attached disks, then list them and
identify the names e.g. /dev/sdx, /dev/sdy.
$ vsnap disk rescan
$ vsnap disk show
OR
$ sudo lsblk
•
Create a Physical Volume on each disk, then add them to the existing Volume Group
named "vsnapdata" to expand it, and then expand the existing Logical Volume named
"vsnapdatalv".
$ sudo pvcreate /dev/sdx
$ sudo pvcreate /dev/sdy
$ sudo vgextend vsnapdata /dev/sdx /dev/sdy
$ sudo lvextend -l 100%VG /dev/mapper/vsnapdata-vsnapdatalv
•
Extend the XFS partition to fully occupy the newly expanded Logical Volume.
$ sudo xfs_growfs /dev/mapper/vsnapdata-vsnapdatalv
•
Run "df -h" and verify that the volume /opt/vsnap-data is mounted and has the desired
new size.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Chapter 8. Conclusion
Chapter 8. Conclusion
Congratulations! You are now ready to start using IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. Please refer to
the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Installation and User’s Guide for additional information on
product usage.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Appendix A. vSnap Server Maintenance
Appendix A. vSnap Server Maintenance
Erasing a disk
If you need to erase a disk during the initial configuration you can destroy all data on the disk
and make the disk reusable for vSnap pool selection and creation. Use this command with
extreme caution because it will overwrite the disk header and destroy all data on the disk.
vsnap support diskwipe <diskid>
Setting the maximum number of replication streams
If you need check or change the maximum number of streams used for replications you can use
the following commands.
To check the current number of streams used for replication:
vsnap system pref get
The number of streams used for replication is reported by the replMaxStreams value. (The
default value is 5)
To change the number of streams used for replication:
vsnap system pref set -–name replMaxStreams –-value <number>
Where number is the number of streams that you want to use.
Setting the maximum number of cloud offload streams
If you need check or change the maximum number of streams used for data offload to cloud
object storage you can use the following commands.
To check the current number of streams used for replication:
vsnap system pref get
The number of streams used for data offload to cloud object storage is reported by the
cloudMaxStreams value (the default value is 5).
To change the number of streams used for data offload to cloud object storage:
vsnap system pref set –-name cloudMaxStreams –-value <number>
Where number is the number of streams that you want to use.
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Appendix A. vSnap Server Maintenance
Setting the maximum offload rate for cloud offloads
If you need check or change the maximum offload rate used for data offload to cloud object
storage you can use the following commands.
To check the current maximum offload rate used for data offload to cloud object storage:
vsnap system pref get
The maximum offload rate is reported by the cloudOffloadRate value (the default value is
536870912 bytes/second which is 512 Mb/sec).
To change the number of streams used for replication:
vsnap system pref set –-name cloudOffloadRate –-value <number>
Where number is the maximum offload rate in bytes/second.
Checking file system integrity on vSnap pools
When using the vSnap server provisioned RAID 6 as discussed in Choosing the Appropriate
Technologies: RAID the vSnap server provisioned software RAID can detect and correct data
corruption. This is done through the underlying file system checksum mechanism. A checksum
operation is performed for every block that is written to the vSnap pool. The checksum of each
block is transparently validated when the block is read, allowing the detection silent corruption.
In the event that a there is a checksum mismatch on a read, the underlying file system will
attempt to recover the data from any available redundant copy of the data.
When recovering data from a redundant copy of the data, it will be more likely to be successful
the sooner that data corruption can be detected. Having a strategy to periodically read the data
from the vSnap server pools will advantageous in detecting this type of data corruption sooner
then later. There are several ways to read data from the vSnap server storage pools (which in
turn will validate the data checksums):
1. Replication or offload of data in the vSnap server to another vSnap server or to a cloud
object storage repository. Note that this method only will read the most recently
changed blocks due to the incremental forever nature of the replication and offload
features.
2. Periodic recovery of resources (virtual machines, applications, databases) into
production or clone mode. Note that this method will only read the selected snapshot of
the resource.
3. Periodically reading all the data in the vSnap server pools using the vsnap pool scrub
command
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Appendix A. vSnap Server Maintenance
To start a scrub of a vSnap pool, issue the command
vsnap pool scrub start --id=1
To see the status of the scrub process, issue the command
vsnap pool scrub status --id=1
If you need to stop the scrub process, issue the command
vsnap pool scrub stop --id=1
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Appendix B. Performance Information
Appendix B. Performance Information
You can compare IBM system performance results against your IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
storage configuration as a reference for expected performance.
Observed results are based on measurements that were taken in a test lab environment. Test
systems were configured according to the blueprints in this document. Backups of VMware
systems were taken across a 10 Gigabit Ethernet connection to the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
vSnap server. Because many variables can influence throughput in a system configuration, do
not expect to see exact matches with the results shown in this appendix.
The following typical factors can cause variations in actual performance:
•
•
•
The read performance of the source disk during backup and write performance of the
target disk during restore.
The number of client sessions that are used in your environment.
The amount of duplicate data and the response to compression.
This information is provided to serve only as a reference. The following measurements were
taken using the physical Supermicro vSnap server with software provided RAID using both
deduplication and compression (except where compression-only is noted). The vSnap log was
not mirrored.
Metric
Daily amount of new backup data
Backup ingestion
rate
Limit or range
8 – 20 TB/day
Notes
Amount before data
reduction
Deduplication
1.4 TB/hr
and compression
Compression only 2.8 TB/hr
Table 12 - Data intake
Metric
Total managed data
Range
205 TB – 820 TB
Notes
Total managed data is the
volume of data stored (size
before data reduction)
Table 13 - Protected data
Metric
Throughput of VMware clone
restore
Number of vm’s restored
1
2
4
Rate
337.6 GB/hr
675.3 GB/hr
988.9 GB/hr
8
969.6 GB/hr
Table 14 - Data recovery
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Appendix C. vSnap Server Performance Test Tool
Appendix C. vSnap Server Performance Test Tool
The vSnap server performance test tool (vsnapperf.pl) is useful for evaluating the performance
the storage used by the vSnap server. The tool can be used prior to using IBM Spectrum Protect
Plus in a production environment.
The tool generates pseudo-random data that is useful for performance measurements when
the vSnap server is using compression and deduplication.
The vSnap server software must be installed and a vSnap pool must be created and mounted
before using this tool.
The readme for this tool is provided here for reference:
#********************************************************************************
# IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vSnap disk performance test tool
#
# name: README.txt
#
# Notice: This program is provided as a tool intended for use by IBM Internal,
#
IBM Business Partners, and IBM Customers. This program is provided as is,
#
without support, and without warranty of any kind expressed or implied.
#
# (C) Copyright International Business Machines Corp. 2013, 2018
#********************************************************************************
OVERVIEW
The vnsapperf.pl tool is useful for evaluating the performance of storage used
by vSnap prior to going in to production. The tools builds around the ldeedee
tool which is able to generate pseudo-random data that is useful for more
accurate performance measurements when vSnap is using compression and deduplication.
As a pre-requisite, the vSnap software must be installed and a vSnap pool must be
created and mounted. For more information on creating a vSnap pool, consult the
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus blueprint which are available at
http://ibm.biz/IBMSpectrumProtectPlusBlueprints
There are currently two workloads implemented, seqwrite and seqread, which are
intended to simulate the large seq write and read workload driven by backup and
restore.
INSTRUCTIONS
Common use cases for the tool are best conveyed with a series of examples.
View the tools on line help with:
perl vsnapperf.pl -help
1) Perform a sequential write of a 10GiB file using a single thread.
perl vsnapperf.pl seqwrite -fileSize 10g
2) Sequential write of two 10GiB files using two threads. The -overwrite option is required
to overwrite the file left behind fromthe previous test. Do not take a snapshot of the
volume
after the write completes.
perl vsnapperf.pl seqwrite -fileSize 10g -numVol 2 -snapshot no -overwrite=yes
3) Perform five iterations of five threads writing 10GiB files.
volumes
at the end of each iteration.
Take a snapshot of all five
perl vsnapperf.pl seqwrite -fileSize 10g -numVol 5 -iterations 5 -snapshot yes -overwrite=yes
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Appendix C. vSnap Server Performance Test Tool
4) Perform two iterations of five thread reads of the 10 GiB files left from the previous test
#3.
perl vsnapperf.pl seqread -fileSize 10g -numVol 5 -iterations 2
5) Resume another five iterations five thread 10GiB writes picking up where test #3 left off.
perl vsnapperf.pl seqwrite -fileSize 10g -numVol 5 -iterations 10 -skipNum 5 -snapshot yes overwrite=yes
EXAMPLE
The following example was taken from the SPP blueprint Physical Supermicro reference.
# perl vsnapperf.pl seqwrite -fileSize 10g -numVol 5 -iterations 10 -skipNum 5
-snapshot yes -o verwrite=yes
===================================================================
: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vSnap storage performance test (Program version 1.1 beta)
:
: Running with action seqwrite
:
: Number of iterations: 10
: Skipping iterations: 5
: Number of volumes:
5
:
: Block size:
256k
: File size:
10g
: Syncwrite:
disabled
: snapshots:
yes
: Random:
/dev/randhigh
: Volumes:
/vsnap/vpool14/SPPvSnapPerf1 /vsnap/vpool14/SPPvSnapPerf2
/vsnap/vpool14/SPPvSnapPerf3
/vsnap/vpool14/SPPvSnapPerf4 /vsnap/vpool14/SPPvSnapPerf5
:
===================================================================
: Beginning I/O test.
: Run 6. Output: vsnapperf6.txt Status: COMPLETE
Seconds: 97.10 Total GiB: 50.0 MiB/sec:
527.29 IOPS: 2109.16
: Run 7. Output: vsnapperf7.txt Status: COMPLETE
Seconds: 97.81 Total GiB: 50.0 MiB/sec:
523.49 IOPS: 2093.95
: Run 8. Output: vsnapperf8.txt Status: COMPLETE
Seconds: 97.49 Total GiB: 50.0 MiB/sec:
525.17 IOPS: 2100.68
: Run 9. Output: vsnapperf9.txt Status: COMPLETE
Seconds: 97.62 Total GiB: 50.0 MiB/sec:
524.50 IOPS: 2097.99
: Run 10. Output: vsnapperf10.txt Status: COMPLETE
Seconds: 98.03 Total GiB: 50.0 MiB/sec:
522.31 IOPS: 2089.22
: All iterations complete!
:
: Total processed
(GiB):
250.0
: Minimum throughput (MiB/sec): 522.31
: Maximum throughput (MiB/sec): 527.29
: Average throughput (MiB/sec): 524.55
===================================================================
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Appendix D. Protecting vSnap System Configuration
Appendix D. Protecting vSnap System Configuration
A vSnap server consists of two sets of data
1. The vSnap pool (or storage pool) which is the logical organization of disks into a pool of
storage which is consumed by the vSnap server component.
2. Configuration and metadata information which resides in the /etc/vsnap directory of
the vSnap server
You can back up the configuration and metadata information for use cases where the vSnap
pool data is intact and valid but the configuration or metadata information is lost or not
available. This can occur in these situations:
1. The vSnap server compute environment is lost but the storage is not. An example is a
vSnap server that is running as a virtual machine and the storage backing the vSnap pool
is on a pRDM disk. In this case the vSnap server virtual machine is lost but the data on
the pRDM disk is still valid.
2. The vSnap server compute environment needs to be changed but the storage does not.
An example is a vSnap server that is running in a virtual machine and the storage
backing the vSnap pool is on a pRDM disk. In this case the vSnap server needs to be
rebuilt or recreated on a new virtual machine but the data on the pRDM disk is still
valid.
Backing up vSnap System Configuration
The backup procedure is based on the vsnap system config backup command which creates a
tar (gzip compressed) file. The resulting file can then be securely copied to a central location,
such as the Spectrum Protect Plus server.
To back up the vSnap system configuration, issue the command
vsnap system config backup --outfile backup.tgz
(alternatively you can append a date stamp)
vsnap system config backup --outfile backup."$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)".tgz
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Appendix D. Protecting vSnap System Configuration
Restoring vSnap System Configuration
To restore the vSnap system configuration, issue the command
vsnap system config restore --file backup.tgz
The restore process will automatically perform the following steps if necessary:
1. initialize the vSnap server
2. stop all vSnap services
3. export the existing pool on the vSnap server
4. discard the default configuration
5. extract contents of the backup file to the appropriate directories
6. re-start the vSnap services
7. introduce the restored encryption keys
8. mount the vSnap pool
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
Notices
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
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of the publication. IBM may make improvements and/or changes in the product(s) and/or the
program(s) described in this publication at any time without notice.
Any references in this information to non-IBM websites are provided for convenience only and
do not in any manner serve as an endorsement of those websites. The materials at those
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Licensees of this program who wish to have information about it for the purpose of enabling: (i)
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Such information may be available, subject to appropriate terms and conditions, including in
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Blueprint
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